BOCA AGENCY BACKS CUTS IN MALL PLAN

BOCA RATON -- Not wanting to look like "spendthrifts," Community Redevelopment Agency officials on Wednesday wholeheartedly embraced a scaled- down version of their plan to raze the Boca Raton Mall and replace it with a downtown cultural-commercial center.

The altered plan could knock $20 million off the public cost of the project.

The biggest change in the Mizner Park plan, which a consultant said would reduce its potential cost from $64 million to no more than $44 million, is the removal of a $17 million performing arts center that residents in a public survey said they would most like to see in the downtown.

Other projects cut from the proposed cultural center were a $1 million outdoor Greek amphitheater that residents generally rejected and a $1 million glass entrance pavilion to the park.

The latest plan, presented to the agency by Charles Siemon, director of the project's team of consultants, is the fifth Mizner Park option presented to the agency. It was designed to take public response into account.

The new plan also would save nearly $1 million in architectural and other planning fees, Siemon said.

Concerned that the public's main impression of Mizner Park is an inflated price tag, agency members voted unanimously to endorse the less-expensive proposal.

"I'm very pleased with it," agency member Glenn Murray said. "I think we have come to ... a realistic option.

"I know $40 million is a great deal of money but so is the magnitude of cancer we've got there," he said of the mall.

He urged the agency to act swiftly to carry out the plan to "maintain the momentum we've got going," a reference to the City Council's approval on Tuesday of developer George Barbar's proposed downtown financial center, a key component in the agency's strategy for a revitalized downtown.

"I feel the new plan answers challenges made ... so we're not looking like spendthrifts but realistic people. I'm all for it," member Richard Murdoch said.

The new plan includes a site for the performing arts center, but not the money to build it. Siemon told the agency that the performing arts building could materialize if a private outfit comes along.

The new proposal includes a mercantile plaza for retail shops with up to 200,000 square feet of selling space on an 8-acre slice of the site -- an increase over the 65,000 square feet originally allotted. The plaza was enlarged to allow mall tenants to remain in the center.

It will also feature about 13 acres of park land, a large lagoon, an esplanade, a community center with a 550-seat theater-auditorium, and sites for other cultural activities.

A tree-lined walkway would link the center with the Royal Palm Plaza, at a cost of $500,000 to $1 million, Siemon said.

Initially, mall tenants had staunchly opposed Mizner Park, but softened their position when the agency promised to accommodate them in the new center. The new plan proposes requiring the developer who builds the commercial plaza pick up the tab for moving uprooted shop owners.

The agency can chip away at the public cost further by choosing not to buy Denny's Restaurant, on Federal Highway on the northwest corner of the mall site, and a bank at its south end, Siemon said. That would result in a savings of $1.8 million.

And $2.8 million can be lopped off the price tag, Siemon said, bringing the cost "slightly below $40 million," by changing financing of capital improvements.

The plan will come before the agency once more, then go to the City Council for approval. Its ultimate fate rests in the hands of voters, who would determine in a referendum whether city bonds would be issued to finance the center.